Various IDW oneshots
by antepathy
Summary: Forgive lame 'title'  Collection of short oneshot fics tying in with various IDW comics microcontinuities. Ratings vary, characters vary.  All in one place for your convenience!
1. In Darkness: Drift, Turmoil

A/N: Hey, y'all. I have a bunch of short ficlets/oneshots based on existing continuities, so I thought instead of spamming y'all with new fic, I'd divide them by continuity. Here's my IDW stuff. Various comics, possible spoilers. I'll try to be careful with headers so you know what comic I'm tying in with and you can decide to read or not!

In Darkness  
M  
Drift/Deadlock, Turmoil  
Post _Drift_, possibly mid issue 4.

"Deadlock." The voice came out of the darkness, as if it was the darkness itself that spoke. A feral, living darkness. It seemed…amused, as if feeding on his isolation and discomfort.

Drift turned, in the darkness, trying to triangulate the voice. His hands floated to his scabbards, futilely. He knew before they closed on empty air that his short swords were gone—he didn't even have to think to realize that the weight of his great sword was missing from between his shoulders. "Not my name," he said, letting his voice echo into the darkness, if not to locate his enemy than to sense walls, obstacles around him.

A harsh laugh, that grated on his audio. He…knew that voice. "Turmoil."

"You remember _my _name, at least." A shadow stirred among the shadows. Drift tried to focus, but his optics had been jammed in high-key setting. His audio struggled to compensate, becoming extra keen.

"Yes," Drift said, turning his head, determined to pinpoint the voice's source. Even without weapons, he was dangerous. Wing had trained him hard, in Crystal City, wisdom through blows, knowing that it was the only language Drift could have understood at the time. Patient, yet, insistent.

Combat was not all that Wing had been teaching him, but it turned out, sometimes, to be the more useful part of Wing's lessons. He balled his fists.

Another laugh, which echoed around the room, chafing Drift's hypersensitized audio. "Belligerent as always," Turmoil scoffed. "Regardless of the odds."

"Yes," Drift said. "You used to value that."

Another stir of shadow on shadow. "I still do. You're simply…misguided. Misaimed."

"Misaimed."

A shrug Drift could hear more than see. "Isn't that what you are? A weapon. Nothing more."

Drift whirled toward the sound. It was true. In a limited fashion. He was a weapon. It's what he'd believed all along. But he'd let the Decepticons wield him, call his shots and range for too long. And then the Autobots, even before, even attacking Turmoil's own ship, how many vorns ago? Even then, trying to aim him. Take him over, as if he had to be one or the other. If not one, the other. If not blackness, white.

Drift wanted to aim himself. Make his own decisions. He'd let others make them for him for too long.

THAT was the other lesson Wing had been teaching him, in the rigid, stultified, self-righteous atmosphere of Crystal City. That was the point, the quiet subversion of teaching war in a city sworn to peace. That was the clarity in the opaqueness of the 'Crystal' City, buried deep in the blind, dark ground. "How little you know."

The shadows moved, a fist flashing into Drift's damaged sight to strike, hard and fierce, against his helm. "Yes. Let's explore that."

Drift brought his hands up in a cross-block, shoving the hand away. A weapon is nothing without a wielder: a warrior was nothing without will.

He had will. _That_ could not be taken from him, at least.

Turmoil's other hand struck, digging in, fingers harsh, tearing at the circuitry of Drift's arm. Sparks flew, blinding Drift's damaged video feed with white stars of static and pain. Drift bit down on a cry, bringing his free hand around, prying up the fingers, bending them back against their functional range.

Turmoil grunted in pain.

Drift shifted his weight, stabilizing his legs, seizing the larger mech's hand in a wrist-bar.

Drift went down hard, abruptly, Turmoil cutting one of his legs by a blow behind his knee-joint. He sank his grey fingers into Turmoil's black plating, refusing to let go, dragging down with his weight, straining the larger mech's servos, using his mass and weight against him. As Wing had taught him.

"Show me pain," Turmoil hissed, holding Drift's weight on his arm. "Show me what you have learned, traitor."

"Traitor," Drift echoed, the word meaningless to him. Traitor to one meant loyal to the other. No. He had not cut himself free only to tie himself to another dangerous frame.

He let the rest of his weight fall, kicking his feet into Turmoil's midsection. Turmoil grunted, struts collapsing, a whine of metal as plating gave to the heavy force, like anvils, of Drift's armored footplates.

They tumbled to the floor, limbs lashing at each other, both blinded by darkness from without, and rage from within.

Turmoil reared up over him. Even Drift's damaged video saw the moving darkness, the hateful red optics blaring a hot fury upon him like malevolent suns. "You will never escape me, Drift. Do you know why?"

Drift growled, bucking his hips, trying to shift the heavy pelvic frame off his chassis. His arms were pinned, useless, by Turmoil's knees.

Turmoil chuckled, rocking forward, Drift's forearm armor yielding with hissing pops from blown hydraulics. Drift's sensornet flared whiter than Wing's armor, then blue. He could feel the hot slickness leaking over his palms, his hand actuators sizzling into failure.

Drift drove his knee against Turmoil's back, his greave armor edge biting into Turmoil's backplate in one last, desperate attempt at freedom, at self-assertion.

"I won't let you get away," Turmoil leaned over, whispering the words, near, intimate, his EM field blooming over Drift's own, which was staggering and clouded with bad current. "Because we're exactly the same. Just inverse images of the same thing. You don't leave until you see that, Deadlock."

"Drift," Drift insisted, feeble, but resolute.

Discard hypocrisy. Find your own path, your own way. Let no one make your decisions. Even if you have to fight through them, fight through yourself, fight through pain, and are not Autobot, nor Decepticon. You are not Turmoil's shadow. You are not Deadlock. Discarded selves. Discarded identities that no longer serve, that merely confine. You are Drift.

Whoever that is.

Turmoil laughed. "We can solve your drifting." He sank one hand into the shoulder panel, tearing at the Autobot insignia. Drift's shoulder blazed with pain. He leaned closer, so close that Drift could feel the heat of his optics on his cheeks. "And those blue optics are next."


	2. Perspective: Starscream, Thundercracker

Like I said, these'll hit different IDW continuities. Here, some Megatron Origin. Thanks for checking these out! :D

Perspective  
IDW/MO (takes place during/after the last issue)  
PG  
Starscream, Thundercracker

Starscream paused, triumphant, on the landing platform, turning to watch the burning city as his engines still rippled heat from his recent flight. Kaon, in flames. The flickering light seemed to kiss across Starscream's sharp-edged smile.

Thundercracker had waited this opportunity to speak to Starscream alone, but even so, he felt a tremor of unease. Starscream had gone in, perhaps too deep to come back unmarked. Still, Thundercracker had to try, try to voice his disquiet.

"Starscream," he said, stepping out of the shadow of the portal arch. A tentative beginning.

Starscream tore his gaze reluctantly away from the city burning beneath his feet. "Thundercracker. Can you see?" He swept his hand out over the horizon. "Look! Look what we have done!" He seemed almost giddy.

Yes, Thundercracker thought. That's the problem. Look what we have done. He stepped closer to the edge, closer to Starscream. "Destruction," he said.

Starscream's smile withered on one edge. "Clearing away the old," he corrected. As if it were merely a matter of perspective.

"Not all of the old is bad."

Starscream shrugged. "Then it will survive."

So simple. Thundercracker shook his head. It wasn't that simple. It couldn't be. "Is this what you wanted? All along? Is this how you thought it would turn out?"

"It's more than I could have imagined," Starscream said, and the orange flames seemed to glow inside his optics, burning with a zealot's intensity.

"Yes," Thundercracker agreed, blandly. It was more than he had imagined, also. He'd signed on to be a gladiator. He'd signed on to fight, to prove himself, to test his mettle. To be a warrior. Not…a slaughterer.

"That just shows," Starscream continued, breathlessly, "the limit of my initial perspective, of course. So limited." He shook his head.

No, Thundercracker thought. That shows you before all of this…gunk accreted onto you. Onto us. He looked down at his own arms, laden with illicit weaponry. He wondered if Starscream's arms felt as heavy as his own. He'd wanted them, but hadn't realized the power, the dark, twisting, corrupting power, that came with them. Gunk.

He had no words that could convince Starscream. Nothing that could penetrate the thick armor, nothing that could get beyond the fierce light in Starscream's optics.

"What next? For us?" The only question he could ask, and, in a way, the only question he cared about. They had come together; Megatron's first aerial force. Even he felt the obligation there.

"Whatever Megatron decrees," Starscream said. His optics crested hungrily over the burning skies, following billows of smoke as they surged toward the dark maw of the night sky.

"And if he leads us to our deaths?" Tentative, testing the unstable ground.

"Then we can know our deaths went to the freedom of Cybertron." Starscream nodded, content at his decree. Self-satisfied. Self-confident.

No: finding his confidence in Megatron, through the battered gladiator. What pull did Megatron have for Starscream? Was it the romance of the low-caste origin? Was it the wanton brutality? Was it the ambition, the only thing larger and more grand than Starscream's own? Or was it the mystery, those strange moments of quiet, the strange hesitations? Thundercracker had heard that Megatron had balked at his first arena kill. And Thundercracker had seen him take his imprisonment, the goading of the Elite as they bound him in stasis chains, with a patient dignity that he could not understand.

Thundercracker grunted. He regretted his folly—how could he question? How could he ask when he was so inept with words himself? "And them?" He pointed at the distant specks of refugees, a desperate black line snaking its way out of the city's heart on the main, bomb-warped thoroughfares. "They've given unwillingly."

"So much the worse for them," Starscream said, mildly. He did not let his optics rest on the line of refugees, as if afraid of some contamination. He frowned. "You seem…unhappy, Thundercracker." He said it as if he couldn't believe such a thing was possible. As if he doubted his own perception.

Thundercracker shrugged one shoulder, unable to commit to the lie with both shoulders. "I don't know what to make of this, that's all. It's…new to me."

Starscream tilted his head, optics glinting. "New, yes. We are the heralds, Thundercracker, of the new order." An impassioned hand clutched at his arm. The other hand's blue fingers stretched out over the blighted, burning city, as though scattering blessings. "This is a testament to Megatron's greatness, his vision."

Thundercracker set his mouthplates, refusing to argue. The Trine was more important than a squabble like this. He'd find another way to free them all from Megatron's control.

But for him, the burning city was a sign of Starscream's burning soul.


	3. Done To Me: Arcee

Done To Me

PG-13  
IDW Post-TOTF Arcee  
Arcee, Ratchet  
This is technically a hurt/comfort fic.

She knew that Ratchet was disturbed by her appearance. Appearances, actually. She could feel this emotion she most desperately did not want to call 'revulsion' almost roiling off him. Well, to be honest, she wasn't happy herself. Herselves. Frag. She'd somehow been able to—skill born of fear and panic and a desperate, furious desire to survive—move all three of her bodies independently, racing through the moon base, bent on escape. But now that the immediate crisis had passed, the enormity of her new situation struck her like a blunt weapon. And she had time to realize….

Flatline. He had changed her. The experiment had gone wrong, apparently. That gave her some grim satisfaction, really—that he had NOT had his way. He had not won. And she had deprived him of valuable data by escaping. Is that all she was? Data? She frowned. Ratchet paused, looking up at purple-her's face, half-apologetic. She shook her head dismissively.

And she could sincerely hope that he had died in the base's destruction. Which was, she realized abruptly, an un-Autobot-like thought. She should not wish malice on another Cybertronian. In combat, it was different. But this?

Well, honestly, she didn't think there were rules or ethical guidelines for how to deal with this. How to deal with the fact that someone else has…wrought such changes on your own body, changed your future, changed your presence so thoroughly. This was worse than maiming. Limbs could be refabricated. Sparks…could not be rejoined.

Maybe she was projecting. Maybe it wasn't that awful. She'd seen the looks on their faces when she and the other two—Skids and Mudflap—had managed to limp back to Autobot territory. She'd thought the pity was for Skids and Mudflap and the obvious damage to their processors. They were victims, not her. She was not a victim. She…refused.

They'd always presumed that her smaller frame made her unsuitable for heavy combat—no matter how many times she'd proved herself, even on the assault on the Nemesis after Megatron's death, even after derailing Starscream's mad plan to recreate the Allspark, they'd held her as a secondary participant. The heroes there were the others—Smokescreen, Air Raid—those who had given far more than she had. Not a victim. But not a hero either. Until she had staggered the twins' ship into the hangar, her voice over comm confident, sure. And then they'd seen her—all three of her, and….

Something must have shown on her faces. Ratchet laid his scanner down, looking up at purple-her's face. "It helps to talk about it," he said. "Sometimes."

She shrugged—her pink one, the one she thought of as her, as more her than the others, who were also her. "Maybe this isn't one of those times."

"Maybe it is." He kept his face on the purple one's.

"All right," she said, deliberately switching to her blue frame. "I hate this. I hate everything about this. I hate how I look. I mean…look at me." She allowed purple-her to raise her arms—uneven, asymmetric, ungainly. So unlike the beautiful sleek symmetry of her old form. Her original form. The form she had worn through so many orbital cycles.

"Different aesthetics," Ratche said, blandly. "There's no judgment involved."

"Decepticon aesthetics," she spat from her purple mouth, letting her blue optics drill into Ratchet's.

"Yes," he admitted. "But it allows us to study their technological refinements. Our developments have…split in the ages since the wars began."

"Of course," she said, bitterly, "because I love to be a scientific exhibit, and not a sentient bot."

"That's not what I'm saying." He paused, realizing…it was what he was saying. Precisely. But before he could formulate an apology that was less awful, that could hope to undo the damage, she continued.

"And their developments are because they have no ethical constraints upon their experimentation, unlike us." She glared, from all three of her faces, catching Ratchet in a crossfire of resentment.

"I didn't say they were better."

She said nothing, letting the discomfort swell between them. Let him feel bad. Let him realize how insulting he was, viewing her as nothing more than a display of clever engineering.

After a long moment, he said, cautiously, "We can do this another time."

"No." The answer from all three of her vocalizers. She wasn't ready for this, now, but she doubted she'd be any more ready for waiting. And the idea of heading toward this, seeing it rolling toward her on her duty log, bracing herself for this examination…? She wasn't sure she could do that. "Get it over with."

"I need to know the engineering to be able to repair you if things go wrong," Ratchet said, his voice lacking its usual gruff tone.

"Fine," she snapped. "I never said otherwise."

"I know. It's just…it's not idle curiosity," he said. The closest he could come to an apology, she suspected. That was all right. She wasn't good with them herself. "Or pity."

Purple-her flinched. Pity. Primus no, she did not want pity.

"I don't know how to do this," pink-her said. "I hate this, but I don't want…anyone else's judgment. Like they have no right to feel…bad for me. Because they don't know."

"They don't know," blue-her echoed.

"They don't," Ratchet agreed. "They can't know. No one can ever understand what you've been through, Arcee." He bent to pick up his scanner again. "You can fight against this, and tear yourself apart, and let the opinions of others become a mirror in which you see yourself."

"And what? Just…never look in the mirror again?" She threw his metaphor back at him. Double meaning and all.

He ignored it. "Or you can realize that what you are is not…this." He thumped one of the lumpy fairings. "What you are, your essence, what kept you alive, and ruined Flatline's experiment…is something beautiful, Arcee. Something strong. Something that I have never seen want to give up. If you give up, they win."

"What I am IS this, though, Ratchet. We're all formed by our frames—size, armor weight, everything. Our bodies create us. We're not just…floating sparks."

"No. We're not. But you can view your body as an impediment. Or a challenge." He turned, slowly, meeting all three of her faces.

"A challenge," she said, softly. All three of her.


	4. Candy: Megatron

IDW: Megatron Origin  
Megatron, Soundwave  
PG  
Mid Issue Three, perhaps?

The title sounds cracky as hell, no? It...totally isn't. I admit I find many Megatrons hard to wrap my brains around-Bay!megs is more or less insane and sadistic, and G1 Megatron is, well, kinda mean. But (and I feel like Goldilocks here) MO Megatron is...just right. :P

Soundwave dropped a white and purple striped box in front of Megatron, on top of the map he was studying. So much he had to learn if he was going to do this right. So much he didn't know, having been buried under the crust of the planet digging for energon.

This was simply a different kind of mining: it required the same patience, constant attention and, unfortunately, groping in the dark. It was a science as much as a gut-feeling-impulse, and Megatron was determined to master it as well.

"What…is this?" He prodded the box.

Soundwave's golden visor blazed. "Something of the upper classes. Consider it a…gift from Senator Ratbat."

A smirk. Oh, indeed. An unwilling gift, Megatron was willing to wager. He opened the box, curious. Something, obviously, of value, the box itself polished to a silky finish, the colors inlaid. Even the packaging was expensive. And inside….

Megatron grunted, pushing the box away. "I don't have time for this."

"You must make time." Something in his tone drew Megatron's attention. "Are you," Soundwave said, tapping the rim of the box, "a mere laborer? A pit fighter? Or something more? You must test your own boundaries, or else they are worth nothing."

Megatron considered the box, dubiously. "Boundaries. With…what is this? Some sort of…refined energon?"

"It is candy," Soundwave said, quietly. "A confection."

"Candy." Megatron said the word as though it were slightly embarrassing. "Boundaries and…candy." Perhaps whatever had happened between Soundwave and the former Senator had…unhinged Soundwave.

Soundwave's chin dipped, in some expression Megatron had yet to decode. "Megatron. Senator Ratbat paid more for that box of candy than you earned in a full orbital cycle in your former profession." The truth, baldly, a little sharply, as though a mild rebuke that Megatron hadn't known this. Which was, of course, why Megatron valued Soundwave. Someone who would not hesitate to call out his failings. Until he had none.

"Indeed," Megatron said. He found himself leaning forward, optics keen on the little colored globs. He prodded one gently, his battered warrior's finger rough against the smooth hardened crème. Absurd. That was the only word for it. Mechs were starving. Turning to the violence of the arena as a way to get energon to survive. Mechs like himself, replaced, obsolesced by automation, left without resources, without hope. And mechs were squandering money on…these. Even the box offended him.

"Try one," Soundwave said, quietly.

Megatron shot him a quelling look. He lifted one from the thin paper cup in which it had nestled, holding it to the light. Some colored substance had been swirled over the white surface, pink and yellow, and a light swirl of pearly silver dusted the top. So much labor. For…this. Tiny. Fragile. Consumed in a moment.

He popped it into his mouth, unsure if the best way to eat it was to do that or bite into it. The energon melted into an almost liquid warmth, tingling against his glossa, its flavor sweet and pure—almost like the taste of energon that had spattered on his lips from his first kill.

His optics met the golden visor, searching his face intently. "You understand?" Soundwave asked.

He grunted, the enriched, glorious silky swell of the confection bursting a strange pleasure across his sensornet. This was no temptation, this sweetness. Too much would cloy, sicken him. But one or two and…he could see the appeal. But not at the cost. He couldn't look at the box without seeing the faces of injured comrades, miners who had lost limbs, suffered hours of agony after industrial accidents, the true cost of these treats written in the pain and labor of actual mechs.

If you could look at such decadence and see only colorful candy, you could look at an energon mine and see only money; or an arena and see only sport. Not the mechs who struggled for it, not the mechs clawing for a better life who would never, like Megatron, even see one of these things. It was a symbol, a sign of a kind of blindness.

Or perhaps only thinking of the work and sacrifice was also a kind of blindness, a refusal to see that sometimes, sometimes, those concerns had to be put aside for some greater good. Leading a war—as Megatron stood on the brink of doing—would allow no room for counting up costs in either ledger, even though it would take currency from both.

He didn't know if this was progress or not. But he nodded at Soundwave. Yes. For many reasons, he thought, as the candy's sweetness threatened to curdle in his mouth, this was a moment he would not soon forget.


	5. Disillusioned: Skywarp, Starscream

PG  
IDW:AHM  
Starscream, Skywarp  
spoilers for AHM perhaps? Takes place before "Uneasy Lies the Head" 

"Skywarp." Starscream's voice crackled, annoyed, into the darkness. He should not need to hunt down the other jet. Skywarp was his, even now, and Starscream needed him more since Thundercracker's…absence.

"I'm here," Skywarp's voice was as flat as the dull glare of his optics from the gloom, thudding through the silence.

"What are you doing in here?" Two questions, folded into one—why aren't you doing anything? And why are you here and not with me? Starscream couldn't ask them honestly—he'd lost the ability for directness ages ago.

"Nothing." A sullen, unspoken blame in the voice.

Starscream shrugged it off, his ailerons twitching. "I have need of you." Another shrouded statement. Truer than he wanted to admit.

"Find someone else."

Starscream's optics grew harder at the rejection. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, his voice brittle, "I am your leader." This should not need to be said. Had never needed to be said when Megatron had given orders. Starscream looked down at the Matrix of Leadership attached to his chassis. Useless. Effete. A mere symbol, a gutted hope.

"Leading us…where?"

Skywarp always did play dumb. Only his intimates realized how much of it was for effect. Starscream knew this, and it hurt all the more seeing it aimed at him. Because the question cut to the core of everything. Leading them where? He didn't know. Without enemies, without war, what were they? "Does it matter?" He tried to keep his edge. His silhouette threw itself into the room, wings seeming to melt into the darkness, joining with it. Losing boundary and contour.

A snort. "Better to move than sit and rust?" Not as un-self-aware as he seemed. Skywarp's intelligence betrayed itself at times like this.

"Is that the option you are demonstrating?" Starscream countered. "We can't find our way unless we look for it."

"Find everything but our way."

Starscream felt the dull anger that had been burning in him since Optimus's challenge flare to a white flame. "Do you have a better option?" He stepped in the room, joining shadow with shadow, as the door cut closed behind him. His fists tightened.

"Would you even listen?" Skywarp's voice was heavy with sarcasm.

The question mocked him, seeming to echo from the enveloping darkness. "Did Megatron?" he threw back, viciously.

Skywarp stood up, leaning in, aggressively. His jaw hinge creaked with tension. "Of all mechs, you have no right to hold Megatron up as some sort of…model."

Starscream could feel unleashed rage, unfocused emotion, shimmering off Skywarp like heat. Which he matched with his own, breaching the distance between them with one, weapon-like stab of a finger against the silver chassis. Megatron, sucking up valuable energon in regeneration, rescued by Starscream himself, who would not let Megatron fall to the hands of the Autobots, would not seize leadership through random happenstance. "I have every right."

"You fled," Skywarp accused, sharply.

"I left certain death to rain upon the Autobots. As they deserved." Megatron's final victory, become Starscream's—taking one step closer to his goal. How dare Skywarp accuse him of cowardice when he had acted as a loyal Seeker? He flung a dart he knew would stab right through Skywarp's brittle bubble of defiance. "Unless, you, too have doubts?"

He saw the blow strike home, his optics accustomed to the gloom. He saw Skywarp's face flicker from raw pain to betrayal to rage, to…some fierce constraint. "Protecting the leader of the Empire," he spat. "That's what you said." He laughed, each sound a bark of bitter pain. "You preserve your own ambition. Only. Always."

"And what would you have me serve?" Starscream snarled. "What, in your _infinite_ perspective and wisdom, would you prefer?" He curled his lips around his last, most devastating dart. "Honor?"

Skywarp's optics flew wide, red light flaring over Starscream's armor in shock and insult. Starscream reveled in the moment—he could practically see the memory unspooling across Skywarp's cortex, as the black jet had, in his own crisis of faith, shot his own Trine mate. For this dubious and intangible 'honor'. He could not rule the Decepticons, not yet, but this, this he could control. Words had never failed to be his most faithful, serviceable weapons. He had entirely forgotten the mission he had for Skywarp, completely forgotten everything except that now, his most trusted, the mech whose name was a byword for blind loyalty, was challenging his authority. Challenging the very thing that was his foundation.

"If you like," Skywarp hissed. "Your honor—which saves your rival but allows a dumb weapon to claim the final glory of defeating our enemies—is too slippery for me."

My honor, Starscream thought bitterly, his optics dropping to that other dumb weapon, the Matrix, is too slippery for me, as well. Another thing I can't get a hold of. Another thing that eludes my grasp.

"Very well," he snapped, determined not to let his wound show. Warriors did not show pain before their enemies. "You may stay here, sulking, in the darkness." He spun so hard his heel thruster cut sparks from the floor.

"Enjoy the light," Skywarp spat, as the door spilled the corridor's brightness in, for a moment dazzling Starscream's optics with his own white armor, with sharp glints from the Matrix's scratched frame. "While you can."


	6. Only the Strong: Perceptor, Drift

PG  
IDW: Spotlight: Drift  
Perceptor/Drift  
spoilers for (as in, may make almost no sense without) Spotlight: Drift  
written for Ravynfyre, who is an awesome human being and a great friend

[***]

No.

At one level—at many levels—Perceptor knew that simply saying, simply thinking the word did nothing. Some sort of primitive attempt at magic, using sound and thought to attempt to deny the real. And it surprised him that even he himself was susceptible to such a wild impulse.

But, staring at the energon pulsing over, through his fingers, studying the caved in, rent metal from the hole punched in him, through him, by Turmoil's weapon, flat denial, however nonsensical, was all he had to fall back on.

He'd known the danger. You didn't take a mission that involved boarding a Decepticon ship and not expect some danger. But this…? It stunned him.

No: what stunned him was not the fact that he'd been hit. It was that he was so weak. Kup hadn't wanted him along, told him he wasn't ready for it.

And he wasn't. And he didn't know why. He'd commanded troops before, and had admitted that he was, yes, perhaps a bit rusty in the practice of it, but…he had miscalculated.

Worse than that—he had made a beginner's mistake—Turmoil's taunt rang through his damaged audio, seeming to echo with each purple-pink flare of pulse-rifles around him. He'd given away his position, by talking. By trying to prove that he was pulling his weight, that he belonged here. That he was more than just…Kup's minder.

And his slip had endangered them all. No wonder they'd all left, the battle surging deeper into the crippled ship. He could feel random bursts resonate through the floor under his back, hear the distant sounds of weapons fire. He could see and feel everything…except himself. He felt no pain, and that, to Perceptor, was the worst sin of all—not that he was dying, nor even that he was dying alone, but that he wasn't suffering as he deserved.

They're better off without me, he thought. Dead weight that they deservedly dropped. A traitor, all unknowing, unleashing the enemy upon them through his foolish need to prove that he was useful, that he was pulling his weight. That he was a soldier.

He wasn't a soldier. He was a wrecked frame, a scientific mind without a killer's spark. Not a pacifist so much as lacking the instincts of the others, instincts like Kup's that had kept him alive, cagey, and still strong, after all he'd been through.

Under his back, he felt a high frequency vibration, like an engine whining, rising, wailing into some sort of system crash. The ship would explode. It was already airborne, just a matter of time before it burst, white and red, into raining shards of metal, showering death down upon the city below. Were they winning? Did that mean the Autobots were victorious, or did it mean that the Decepticons were so inured to death that they would destroy themselves rather than allow an Autobot victory?

He didn't know—and he knew that a real warrior would know. Kup would know. Springer would know. For all their brashness, all their attitude, they knew—a science that defied Perceptor's grasp.

Perceptor looked at his energon-stained fingers, turning them over under his damaged gaze, with a kind of dark wonder. It made sense some knowledge eluded him—his task had always been on the micro-scale, studying fine differences, infinitesimal variations. He wasn't designed to look for the macro, the big picture, the infinite stabilities of combat that wove through the vagaries of circumstance.

He did not know.

He did not know.

And he would die not knowing. That was the worst of all—to have an insight, a flash of epiphany, only to have it wasted, any chance of application seeping from him with his leaking life-fluids.

His hands shook, half in terror, half in anger at the waste of it all.

And the floor seemed to hum again, something racing toward him, as darkness reached to close over his one working optic like a hood. And Perceptor felt his frustration surge, even as his energy waned, even as his hands dropped, limply, unpowered, down by his sides. He could feel his optic fading, blue going grey, could feel his energy draining, actuators losing charge. And there was nothing—NOTHING—he could do. Perceptor felt a rage, like a dragon of black flame, rise up through him, pushing against the cool fade of his dying light, hatred at his own weakness, hatred at his failing body, the weak systems clouding, clogging his thoughts.

A shape moved into his narrowing field of vision, a face, armored in white, optics glowing Autobot blue, flat, one dimensional in Perceptor's damaged sight. The new mech. The one who was…neither of them. Not Autobot, not Decepticon, but some other.

"Let's get you out of here," the other mech said, his voice buzzing into static on Perceptor's damaged audio. White arms grabbed him, Perceptor too weak to protest, his traitorous hands flopping numb and weak.

"Leave…me," he managed to whisper.

The other mech's laugh rumbled against his back as he hauled Perceptor upright. "Doesn't work like that, Autobot," he said. "I came here to save lives."

"Not…worth…," Perceptor's words faded, his head dropping back against Drift's shoulder.

"Every life is worth it," Drift said, a thread of anger in his voice, penetrating through Perceptor's numb haze.

And then the darkness of the ship burst in to light and the scream of white air filled Perceptor's audio and there was nothing stable in this world except Drift's arms around him.


	7. Preparation: Sixshot

PG  
IDW/G1  
Sixshot  
Warnings: refs to hallucination/vague ref to psychotic breaks.

Oh look, canon Sixshot! :D

Sixshot worked his way with practiced speed through the armory. He reached for charge-packs for his pistols, stowing them in the small panniers on his legs, then hesitated over grenades. Incendiary or fragmentation? He had a preference for the high-heat incendiaries, but that was mostly because his modified armor allowed him to walk through it unscathed. Shrapnel was a nuisance and nothing more, but he admitted to…something like vanity at the effect of walking through a wall of blue-hot fire.

And he needed this. More than he wanted to say. He needed to restore his own equilibrium. Needed to do what he did best—arguably, the only thing he could do. What he had been built precisely to do.

He snatched two racks of HE grenades. And a sonic disruptor, he thought, turning down the aisle. Natives had comm—primitive, but still with some interstellar capabilities. The siege armature should have taken care of most of that, but…he didn't have his success rate without taking precautions. Siege armatures had failed. Which was why there was Phase Six to begin with.

Though, honestly, by the time anything like help could hear and respond to a plea, even on FTL boost, he'd be done and gone.

And bored. Again.

He tilted his head, considering the disruptor. He was aware of the passing time, but after all, there was no real deadline for this. And every klik he delayed was a klik more pathetic, miserable life for the grubby and recalcitrant natives of Alsargit-5.

Well. He didn't know how grubby or recalcitrant they actually were, or 'pathetic' and 'miserable' for that matter, either. Those were Banzaitron's words. Justifying, for some reason, the commencement of Phase Six. As if Sixshot had to agree or that Alsargit-5 had to be somehow proven worthy of death, or at least, no longer worthy of life.

Sixshot…didn't care. Sinners, innocents, criminals, the pure, everyone died in the end.  
Everyone but him. And even he could be stopped, shut down. He felt the failsafe program's presence in him like a prickly weight. A reminder of his servitude. Just as his heavy neutron-star armor and sealed spark chamber isolated him from every other mech. Marked out, different.

And he used to care. He did. He remembered when he took fierce joy in destruction. He remembered when it was a joy to pit himself against challenges on that scale. One mech versus an entire planet. When every opponent he faced was a valued, honored rival, worthy of remembrance. But the outcome was never in doubt, even back then. Merely an exercise in testing his limits and finding them…limitless.

It was not as liberating as it sounded.

Then he had gone through a phase where he'd approached the non-challenge of mass destruction as some sort of art. He had challenged himself to destroy planets more swiftly, or limiting himself to one kind of weapon (the inhabitants of the Bernays Moon had had to wait as he shot each one, individually, with a steel-bolted crossbow), or with an abstruse system of penalties or process—right to left, or boustrophedon, or spiraling out from some significant landmark. Their fear did not thrill him, nor did the carnage disgust. It was simply…the work of war. As natural to Sixshot as venting his cooling system.

Now, he just did it because it was something to do. No longer thrilling, no longer even interesting. Merely a rote exercise of his already accepted abilities. Merely, he thought, keeping in form. And even that, for no good reason.

He did it, he found, because he could do it. And very few other mechs could. Only two others, and one was...permanently insane, and Black Shadow? Well. His time was limited, even if his abilities were not.

Yes, it had taken a toll. Friendships had attenuated, then shredded. And then… the visions. Well, he didn't think they were actual visions. More a glitch of his cortex, feeding him information a half-klik faster than reality. Knowing the outcome before he even started, until he could see a mech, for example, and his cortex would feed him the image of the mech's head, torn into a scream, energon blade lodged through one sputtering optic, before Sixshot's hand even moved to his dagger.

And that glitch or...madness fed on these missions, as much as kept it in abeyance. Enough brutality and it behaved, letting him have possession of his faculties at other times. Too long without a mission and the visions would spread, until he could not look at his own hands without hallucinations of maiming.

He put the sonic disruptor back on its shelf. He wouldn't need it. Let them call for help. In fact, he'd let them know he was coming. Let them send a pitiful cry for help, scattered into space like seeds of weakness.

Maybe the Autobots would answer. Maybe they'd come. Maybe that would finally glut the dragon of violence perching on his cortex, that would feed and sate the burning in his sealed spark chamber.

And maybe, maybe, that wouldn't be boring.


	8. Battle 13: Overlord, Kick Off

Title: Battle Thirteen  
Rating M  
Verse: IDW/Last Stand of the Wreckers  
Characters: Overlord/Kick Off  
Warnings: Implied character death, spoilers for LSOTW  
PromptOverlord/KickOff I want to taste your pain,  
A/N: Compliant with LSOTW. If you know the story, you know how things end, and this is miserably dark.

What have I become? Kick Off asked himself, staring at the hand that had held severed head of Borehole. His twelfth battle. Twelve. Such a small number to have wrought such a change in me. But such a large number, a huge amount, when measured in sparks guttered out, energon spilt, futures laid waste.

Who was this? What was his name? Kick Off didn't even remember. Number twelve. He'd become so invested, so enthralled with that, that he'd laid everything on that number. He'd remembered it a few kliks ago, when the energon was still hot on his armor, when the sparks were still flying. Now…just number twelve. Just the one who had gotten him his reward.

His reward. Did he want…anything anymore? Freedom was the rumor: twelve victories and Overlord let you go, released you from this brutal madhouse. No more combats. No more hunts. No more of Overlord's 'whimsical' violence, his amused cruelties. But what good would it do him? What good was freedom to him now? What good is freedom if you're trapped in your own brutality? If you hate what you've had to become to earn it?

Still splattered with number twelve's life-fluid, he entered Overlord's chamber. Numb. Barely able to anticipate, to consider the future, because he was still so stuck in the immediate past.

Overlord draped on a chair, just as he had in the small arena. His posture was carefully arranged. He did have an art to him; deliberate insult, deliberate insolence.

"Victor," he said, blandly, and Kick Off wondered if that was because Overlord had forgotten his name as well. The fact that he and this…monster might have anything in common set his tanks roiling.

"Overlord." Kick Off did a quick glance of the room: spare, empty, anonymous. As though its inhabitant had no identity. One large, hollow space, filled with shadows. In its own way, a perfect representation of Overlord.

Overlord leaned forward, his mouth expressive, mobile, framed by the cheekplates of his helm. He seemed to be fighting between a snarl and a smile. "You have fought hard for me." He purred the prepositional phrase. 'For me'. Coopting Kick Off's violence as a tribute to himself. "You have earned a reward."

I do not want it. I do not want anything from your hand. Kick Off held himself stonily still, refusing to grant Overlord any more.

Overlord tilted his head, amused. "Your reward is, of course, a choice. We start your freedoms small."

Choice. He'd had no choice other than live…or be slaughtered. And look at what that choice had gotten him. Kick Off didn't want any more choices. He kept his optics hard on Overlord, as if trying to drill through the larger mech's cortex. Phase Sixers. Completely devoid of feeling. Empty, hollow, hard. Programmed without sentiment. This, he thought, is what you could become. This is what you are on your way to becoming.

I'd rather die.

Too late for that. You made that choice ages ago. Twelve battles ago.

Overlord coiled back in his chair, like a serpent preparing to strike. "Your choice is this: Freedom, but at a price." He gave a dark laugh. "You Autobots have some vapid slogan about that, I believe. Freedom is worth fighting for."

"I've fought enough."

"It's never enough." The red optics flashed with anger. "You gutless fools never understand that. Life is fighting. Constantly. Against entropy. Against stagnation. Against all the forces that would tear you down." He silenced himself abruptly, as though he'd said something too personal.

"I've done your bidding…enough," Kick Off modified. He wished he were tired of fighting, sick at spark about it. Instead, he felt a sharp hunger at Overlord's words. Another symptom of his disease. Of his wrongness. When you understand the enemy, you are them.

"You have not," Overlord said, idly. He darted forward, fast enough that Kick Off jumped back into an attack stance. Overlord laughed again. "Your choice is simple. Fight me. Or self-terminate."

Same thing, Kick Off thought. Same thing.

"I'm thinking," the Phase Sixer continued, idly, confidentially, as though they were friends, "that a mech who has survived twelve of these types of combats might actually be a worthy opponent. Am I wrong in that?" A hint of a goad. Part of Kick Off bristled, while another part begged desperately for Overlord to be wrong.

"You're wrong." You're wrong, he echoed. I'm not like you. NOT like you. His fists balled, in anger against himself.

Overlord clucked. "Then I shall have to extract some other amusement from you." He pushed up , looming over Kick Off. A monolith, built, engineered for one purpose: destruction. Faster than anything that size should have been able to move, he swept down, his fingers whistling through the air before they grabbed at Kick Off and slammed him against the wall, his feet dangling helplessly.

"I want to taste your pain," Overlord's voice was raw.

Kick Off refused to kick, refused to give in. He would fight Overlord. He'd fight himself. But in his own way. He'd reclaim what it meant to be an Autobot.

He felt his own face tighten, his optics locking with Overlord's—eye to eye, peer to peer—for the first time. For the last time. "Do," he said clearly, proud that there was no tremor in his voice, "your worst."


	9. Irruption: Megatron, Soundwave

Title: Irruption  
Rating:PG-13  
Continuity IDW/Megatron Origin  
Characters: Megatron, Soundwave  
Wordcount: ~1200  
Time: 1:45  
For **tf_speedwriting** advent calendar prompt 'scenario: entrenched during a long-running seige'  
A/N: Part of the idea for this came from a random comment **saeru** had made to me once, that Megatron in MO was originally supposed to be some sort of secret weapon (but that that part of the story got dropped in the actual MO plot).

"Report!" Megatron barked, striding down the labyrinthine corridors that twisted under the defunct arena. He had been to inspect the recent damage from the heavy shelling. Autobot tactic—long range artillery. Soundwave could see his irritation at their refusal to come out and fight, choosing to lob heavy ordnance from a distance. But, well, after he had single-handedly defeated Sentinel Prime's Apex system, not many were foolish enough to face him in combat.

Soundwave trailed behind him, face a bland mask. "It is a common tactic that the Council authorizes," Soundwave said, coolly, as if he were not at all betraying his former allegiances. "They simply blockade their enemy off and starve them out."

"Cowardly," Megatron said, barely turning his head. He was aiming for the room they had set aside for combat planning—crude maps tacked to the walls, lit entirely by simple chem lanterns. Their power had been cut off solars ago. He had done with less in the mines.

"Perhaps, but it is the way they fight."

"It is NOT fighting," Megatron hissed. "In combat, we can defeat them."

"They clearly know that." An eloquent shrug, wasted on Megatron's back. "Which is why they turn to such tactics for victory."

"Victory," Megatron spat, crossing the threshold to the planning room. "Paltry victory." He turned to face Soundwave, his face beginning to show signs of strain. Not from the limited resources. Not from the darkness, but from sheer frustration.

It struck Soundwave as an important key. Should he ever need it. "Effective. Survivors are few and broken." Soundwave had sat through enough Senate meetings to know their thinking with an almost intuitive ease. And if that wasn't enough, he had the former Senator himself, Ratbat, thrashing away in his chassis compartment. The more upset Ratbat was, the more accurate Soundwave knew he had been.

"Sounds like what they did to us at the mines." Megatron's mouth twisted at the memory.

"The strategy is not…dissimilar." Ratbat howled silently against Soundwave's cortex. "A way of…stifling dissidence in general."

"It," Megatron said tightly, "Did not work."

"They were not counting on you." No one was. Soundwave had been surprised himself. There had been…limited discontent around the closure of other energon mines, but nothing like what Megatron had started.

And had continued with a meteoric record of success that had blazed a light across the darkness of the lives of those in the lower zones.

Megatron was something unknown. Impossible to predict, impossible to prepare for. Impossible, as Megatron himself well knew, to defeat in combat.

Which was why the ragtag remains of the Senate were trying so hard to starve him out. They had had their moment of 'victory'—Megatron, bound, in chains. They had been running that image nearly nonstop on what few news outlets that were still operational. As if it still meant something. As if only the first half of the story mattered. They ruthlessly suppressed news of the breakout, of Megatron's rising strength. Of Sentinel's defeat they said only that it was a 'temporary setback'.

A narrative they could not control, however. Even the story of Megatron, even the image of him brought low, did not deter. If anything, it raised discontent, stirred more potential troops.

Soundwave had seen it coming, and chosen. They had not, and blundered along their own path. In a way, that was also choosing: refusing to change, refusing to adapt.

Adaptation, Soundwave knew, always meant survival. Movement was life; stagnation was death. And Megatron knew this too, which was why he was chafing, nearly raging, at this forced stagnation.

Megatron grunted, turning to study his maps, blunt fingers tracing out existing tunnels, known blockades. He was unaccustomed to praise, and Soundwave did his best to inure him to it. Soundwave had seen—firsthand—the damage done by someone who took empty words of praise too seriously, too solidly. Megatron would learn to face praise and blandishments with the same quiet stolidity with which he had borne insults and injuries.

"Where is my air support?" Megatron glowered at the map.

"Free of the tunnels," Soundwave reported. "Starscream had speculated that they would be a more useful asset with unfettered movement."

"Unfettered," Megatron echoed. "He has perhaps…too much freedom."

Soundwave approved of Megatron's mistrust. A leader must trust his subordinates…but not too much. A truth he was already learning. A truth Senator Ratbat had forgotten.

"He has his uses. And a certain native political cunning." Soundwave would grant the white jet that much. Starscream's knowledge was hot, quick, intuitive. Much different from Soundwave's own aloof coolness. And Starscream's craftiness was another thing Megatron must learn, if only to arm himself against it. They had all fallen for political manipulation before—even Soundwave, long ago.

"And what use are they to me?" Megatron asked. "Politics are…irrelevant now."

"Politics are never irrelevant," Soundwave said. There was an old saw, one that Senator Ratbat had sneered at, that war was simply politics with clearer battle lines. Ratbat wasn't sneering anymore.

Megatron jutted his lower lip, disliking being crossed, even as he acknowledged Soundwave's point with a nod. "But he needs to be…more useful."

"Would you owe a rescue to him?"

"Yes," Megatron said. "I have trusted him with all of our fates before. He has not let me down." He turned to a list of active mechs, optics furrowing as he tried to divide them into teams. Combat, actual combat, was a skill long dead on both sides, but Megatron was proving a quick, if methodical, study. As if he were born to it.

Simple, Soundwave thought. A miner's thinking. And, perhaps, a soldier's reasoning. Something Soundwave himself could not comprehend—but his wisdom was in realizing that much, drawing a boundary between what he knew and what he could not plumb.

And that was, in essence, what drew him to Megatron—that he could not figure him out, could not predict him, could not manipulate him. Megatron…did not bore him. As Ratbat had, and so many others before him. He had seen something he could not grasp, even that first meeting, when Megatron was merely a promising profit for Ratbat's graft.

"Shall I contact the tetrajets?" Soundwave surrendered.

Megatron thought for a moment, his optics shifting from staring at the roster to staring at his hands. A miner's hands, and a killer's hands. Hands that did, and did not know fear. Hands that hated idleness.

"No," he said. "They think of me as a warrior. But they forget I am a miner."

"Were," Soundwave said.

"Am. We might change, but we don't shed what we have been. I can never leave behind what I learned there," he said, his deep voice filling the room. His hands clenched into fists. He looked up at Soundwave. "Get me a map of the surface. Every miner knows that putting pressure on the bedrock causes irruption."

Soundwave inclined his head. "Yes, Megatron," he said, quietly.

"We shall take the fight to them. I, for one, am sick letting them set the terms of the contest. I am sick of hiding." He said the last as though the word were an obscenity.


	10. DoubleEdged Blade: Wing, Drift

Double Edged Blade  
PG  
IDW/G1 Spoilers like whoa for Drift miniseries  
Wing/Drift  
Spoilers (as noted above), canon character death, wee bit of angst and one teensy kiss.

1.

"Do you trust me?" Wing's voice came from the darkness. Deadlock had felt the strange texture of Wing's heavy robe dragging over him in the close quarters of the alley. Alien. He'd held himself back, withdrawing from the touch. But this was his life, now. Running unknown filthy alleys, again. Surrounded by strangers, surrounded by a large, menacing unknown.

"I don't trust anyone," Deadlock answered. And you'd be a fool to trust me, he added, silently at the hooded head that turned to peer around the corner. But he wanted, needed Wing to be a fool. The last thing he needed was to be saddled with slaves. No. He was not going to slow himself down with a bunch of useless civilians. Turmoil would not stop short of tearing through them. They were nothing to hide behind. They would just slow him down. He needed to be fast, light, unencumbered.

"That's no way to live, Drift," Wing said, turning back.

"Done well enough so far with it," Deadlock shrugged. Don't question me, stranger. The false name he'd given resonated with memories he'd rather stay dead.

The hood shifted, raking up and down Deadlock's muddied, dented frame. "I see," he said, and as hard as Deadlock listened, he heard no sarcasm in the voice.

2.

"Drift?" A golden glow filled the field of Deadlock's vision. "Drift? Are you there?"

Who? Deadlock blinked, his visual field strange. Everything was bright—too bright, the lighting high-key and harsh. He made some noise, his voice sounding strange. Familiar and yet…new. His vision resolved down, the bright golden glow resolving down to optics—amber optics, like he'd never seen before, glowing like suns. And around them, a face.

"Wing?"

The face split into a smile. "Drift," he repeated. "Can you sit up?"

'Deadlock', he wanted to correct, but then remembered, vaguely, that he'd given Wing a pseudonym. A not-so-pseudonym—the name he'd known, and held, and then discarded along with the squalor of Lower City. Instead, he moved, slowly sitting up, his joints feeling stiff and tight.

He froze. This…wasn't him. The angles and sweeps of the armor were all wrong. Someone else. Some_thing_ else. His optics spiraled in, accusing. "What…?" Then his gaze seemed to catch on the wide columnar room around him. Cybertronian, and yet…nothing like he'd ever seen. "Where are we?"

Wing had sat back as Drift struggled up, gesturing with a hand. "This," he said, the smile on his lips taking the edge off the grandiosity of his words, "is New Crystal City." He added, quietly, "You're safe here, Drift."

Drift frowned, the name still uncomfortable and raw. He wasn't safe, and they weren't safe. 'Safe' was a foreign word, a useless word. No place that he stayed at was safe. He'd known it when he left, when he fought his way off Turmoil's ship. There was no going back, there was no peace. He had chosen war, perpetual war, war enough to finally fill his emptiness, fill the hollow that had hungered in him since his youth. The last thing he'd ever wanted was to be 'safe'.

"Nowhere's safe," he said. "They'll come for me." Then, no more. He would give that much warning. He pushed his legs—these new, alien legs at the end of this body that responded to his command—swinging them over the berth's edge, toward the floor.

"We'll handle that when they do." Not doubting his assertion, just, Drift thought sourly, underestimating the threat.

He snorted. "You can't handle them." Not the entire Decepticon army. And when the Autobots found that the dreaded, infamous Deadlock was vulnerable? The fury that had torn at each other for centuries, like a two headed serpent trying to devour itself would turn on…whatever this New Crystal City was.

"We can," Wing asserted, with a confident nod. "You have to trust me."

Drift turned his head away.

3.

"Ridiculous!" Drift spat, wiping one hand across his bruised mouth, his other stinging hard from where it had caught his weight against the ground. He was tired of being sent sprawling like this by Wing, who had promised him his freedom, promised to help him leave if only he defeated Wing. Some sort of stupid game or contest…a humiliating one.

"All life is," Wing said, from somewhere behind Drift's sprawled body. "Wisdom embraces the ludicrous."

"I don't need your riddles," Drift said, pushing to his feet. His new, blue optics blazed, energon stinging in his mouth.

Wing tilted his head, the rest of his body in a loose, deceptively casual pose. "Oh? And what do you need?"

"The truth," Drift said. He knew they hated him here—even though the goodly citizens of New Crystal City professed to abjure hate. And he knew why: even with the new frame, they could smell the violence that was in his basic programming. He lunged at Wing, with one fast feint and then a cross-body blow.

"You must give truth to be able to receive it," Wing said. He dodged effortlessly, twisting like water, or quicksilver, something faster than light and more graceful than the wind, as if Drift's punches literally pushed him aside, safely out of the way.

Drift snarled. "Hypocrites!" he said.

Wing caught his hand, easily, snatching it from the air in motion. His gaze locked with Drift's. "Are you?"

Drift jerked his wrist free. "Accuse me, if you're going to accuse me," he snapped. "I'm sick of disguises."

"Are you wearing a disguise, Drift?"

"You know that's not my name." Drift swung his hand—Wing's forearm just…appeared in time to block it.

"It is your name. It's who you are." He smiled. "Besides, everyone speaks the truth to me."

"Fool."

"We are all many things," Wing said, ducking low under a wild punch, rolling to one side, coming up to Drift's right. "And one of those, for you, is Drift."

Drift whirled, optics white with fury. "You don't know me!" He had a flash of his life back on Cybertron, the underbelly of Kaon. The starving, scrounging, piecemeal, vicious existence. That was where he came from. That was what he knew. This pretty white city was no place for him

"You don't know you," Wing said, easily, dancing back under Drift's next assault. "But I am doing my best to introduce you." He dropped low, hooking one of Drift's ankles with a leg sweep, tumbling Drift down on top of him, then rolling, swiftly, until he straddled Drift's frame, the white arms pinned by Wing's hands. Drift's systems blazed in outrage, summoning anger against Wing's easy mastery of his body. "Is it so hard," he asked, his golden optics soft and warm like the sunlight that Crystal City was too afraid to own, "to trust me?"

Drift snarled, bucking his hips. Wing rode the movement as easily as he did everything else, letting the motion bow his head lower over Drift's supine form.

"I see," Wing whispered, "It's hard for you to trust yourself."

4.

Drift channeled his anger—that he knew Wing would frown at anyway—into punching the wall. Useless gesture, but then again, so was everything else in New Crystal City. Useless. Just for show. Too good to be true, this whole place: pretending to be a vision of everything Drift had dreamed—when he had been Drift, when he'd dared to dream, in the rotting slums of Kaon. In truth it was filled with self-deluded hypocrites who buried themselves in the ground and self-righteousness.

"You're…upset."

Drift whirled, to see Wing with his usual smile, holding up his hands in mock surrender. "Just a guess," Wing added.

"It's not a joke. You're all going to die." They'd found him. They'd come for him. The fragile wall of hope he'd been stupid enough to build shattered, dropping razor-sharp shards. He'd had no choice. No choice. They deserved to die, for their hypocrisy, for running, for hiding. The more he repeated it, the less he believed.

And the more he repeated it, the more he realized his anger at Dai Atlas was his anger at himself.

"Everybody dies," Wing said, cocking his head. "How many truly live?"

Drift's fist came up, faster than he could even think of it, and collided, hard, with Wing's cheekplate. Metal crunched and gave under his knuckles, sparks licking from broken circuits against his fine digital armor. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to punch that enigmatic, mocking smile from Wing's face, to silence the endless, endless riddles, but…once done, he stood, numb, dumb, hands hanging like heavy weights at his sides.

His rage had evaporated, but the words forced themselves from his vocalizer, dully. "You don't know what you're up against. You," he made a limp gesture indicating the whole city, "play at war. You play at freedom, while you hide under the dirt. You play at liberty, when you're slaves to an idea."

Wing's smile was lopsided, dented. "Yes. Yes to all of it. Which is why I leave." He reached out a hand to brush Drift's wrist. "Which was why I found you."

Drift jerked his hand away. "I brought them here," he said, the flavor of confession making him sick, nearly gagging him. "I led them here. To you."

"Not to me," Wing shook his head. "You led them here for you to confront them. They came because you are ready."

Drift wanted to damage Wing, to stop the flood of hopeful, hoping words, stop trying to recast everything into some…grand plan. There was no plan. There was no destiny. Only mistakes. Only a neverending chain of errors and miscalculations, punctuated, stained with violence. He wanted to rage against Wing's calm stolidity, scream until he was finally convinced. And then…and then what? He hadn't thought this far ahead. He hadn't considered he'd care.

Wing's optics warmed, spiraling open. "Yes," Wing said, softly. He reached one hand to stroke Drift's cheek. He leaned forward, his EM field brushing against Drift's. Drift tried to pull away. "You're ready," he murmured.

"You're not," Drift replied, his optics whirring to focus on Wing's face. Wing smiled his enigmatic smile, optics golden and warm and somehow the most beautiful things Drift had ever seen.

"Drift," Wing said, his voice gentle and husky. "I trust you." And he bent, simply, and covered Drift's hot mouth with his own, and there was no more use for words.

5. (epilogue)

Drift sat in the night-cooling sand. The bodies around him didn't matter, except one. The living—unworthy, he thought, himself included—had returned to the business of living, while the dead were busy with the business of the dead.

And he was somewhere in the middle. Alive, yet not alive. Dead, and yet not at peace. He looked at Wing's body, forcing himself to look, to see, to memorize every damage, every injury. Every bit your fault, he told himself. Every dent, every scratch, every broken line, yours. Just visited on Wing instead of you.

It was…impossible. It seemed impossible. Wing, dead. The two words didn't seem to belong together, seemed to repulse each other like similar magnetic fields. "Wing." The name seemed to float in the night air, the world turned to violets and greys, dimming, darkening Wing's brightness.

His hands tightened around the Great Sword lying across his white thighs. Wing's sword, given to him as though either of them had any right to it, by Dai Atlas. It was a sword, like Drift, like Wing, that wanted to wander, that could not stay still. He could still see it, like an overlay on the darkness of the night, the silver flashes and swirls of light glinting off it in Wing's hands as he ran through the practice forms—swift, fluid, beautiful.

And now it was his.

And it wanted a name. It needed a name, something to anchor it to Drift, while they learned each other's contours, each other's edges. It wanted him, he who nobody wanted except as a bounty, as revenge. It wanted to lead him to the real ideals of the Circle of Light, uncorrupted by their years of hiding underground. It wanted to lead him to purity, and honor, and life.

A Great Sword held, they said, a resonant trace of the owner's own spark energy, a sort of totem, his own metal in the alloy that formed the blade. The sword was part of him the way no integrated gun could ever be, resonating with his own frequency. His greatest weapon and his greatest vulnerability.

"Trust," he said, finally. And the night air and the sword and the whole world trembled at the name.


	11. Liminal: Perceptor

PG  
IDW/G1 mid AHM 9 Spoilers like whoa for series to that point.  
Perceptor  
A/N initial dialogue from the comic. The name of the ship, _Black Star_, is entirely my headcanon.  
Warning: spoilers, and angst. My god, the angst.

"…I'd give anything to have Perceptor right now—the _old_ Perceptor. Like this war needed _another_ clown with a gun."

Perceptor stopped in the threshold. No, froze. Froze would be more precise—an icy grip seizing at his spinal struts. Ironhide caught the flash of red from the corner of his optic, his old warrior's periphery as finely honed as ever. Ratchet's head turned, following Ironhide's gaze. He had the…decency, Perceptor supposed, to look mortified.

"Perce—" Ratchet began, holding out one hand, pleading for some forgiveness.

There was no need. Perceptor shook his head, cutting him off. No need. What Ratchet didn't understand, what none of them seemed to understand, is that the 'old' Perceptor was dead. He had died on the decking of the _Black Star_, spilling out in a puddle of energon, words and shame.

"Hear him out," Ironhide said, sharply, stepping into Perceptor's path, as he pushed forward through the room, cutting through it like a laser scalpel.

Perceptor stopped. "No need," he said, his voice soft. "He's right." He let his optics stare down into Ironhide's, flat, save for the artificial depth of the targeting reticle's rangefinder, until Ironhide moved aside.

"Where are you going?" Ironhide tried to make it sound more like a demand than the question it was, clutching on to some vestige of control. Control was in very short supply here, lately, and Perceptor saw no harm in letting Ironhide keep what little he did have.

"Keep watch," Perceptor said, his voice floating, thin and distant even to his own audio. He let it trail behind him, crossing through the far door, stooping as he stepped out into the narrow balcony. Behind him, he heard the others begin to argue…about morale. It struck him that some time ago he might have found the paradox ironic. Now…no. That was another time, another him.

Here, yes. Good vantage—elevation, clear firing lines, few blind spots. Strange how quickly he'd mastered this new art—half intense devotion, and half the fact that at the root, sniping was merely a complex mathematical formula. Windage, muzzle velocity, gravity, rotational speed, force on impact—it was nothing but a chain of calculations and control.

Control. Something, at last, Perceptor could control. Unfortunate that it was smaller than one of his fingers.

He settled himself on one knee, resting his left elbow on his raised left knee, stabilizing the heavy weight of the rifle's barrel. It was the best use of him, now, he knew. The Swarm might return. And his injury had…cost the life of another. If he hadn't been so careless in their run through the city, if he hadn't gotten hit, he could have ignited the second set of explosives.

Instead of Sunstreaker.

Not that he questioned Sunstreaker's choice. If he'd been capable only of that, if he'd lost a hand, his targeting optic, he'd have done the same as Sunstreaker.

But he hadn't, and he couldn't, and Sunstreaker's death became another debt he owed. It seemed no matter how hard he tried, he was a liability. What more could he do? What more could he do? What hadn't he thought of yet?

Ratchet's words echoed back to him, 'the old Perceptor'. Would the 'old Perceptor' see something that he no longer could? Had more than his vision changed? More than his armor? Sunstreaker had died to save others, but also to end his own pain. Would Perceptor's reason be any different, since the choice was the same?

He bit the inside of his mouthplate, calling himself back, a habit he had picked up since…then, a reminder that his words had cost lives. No. Distraction was failure. You cannot afford another slip, another loss.

He tilted forward, running the muzzle of the rifle in a careful, precise angle sweep, left optic keen on any movement, damping visual feed, for the moment, from his reticle. Precision was a liability in this circumstance, until he had a target, a tunnel vision that was blind to any periphery.

A metaphor, he thought, suddenly. Tunnel vision. That's what you've become, Perceptor.

No. That's what this war has become. I have become merely a microcosm of it, a fractal reflection, a hologram of the whole. All the violence, the cool, efficient brutality, and…the pain.

He shifted, scanning the buildings in front of him, looking for the obvious spots for countersnipers. He made no effort to hide—if being a target would draw them out, reveal their threat, he would gladly be the catalyst of their revelation, a revelation that would destroy them.

And him? No great loss. The only regret he'd have dying at any moment was all the death debts he had left unpaid, that they had given their lives for him and found it a very bad return for their investment. They deserved better than mere suicide by combat from him. They deserved everything.

As if…as if he could take the suffering onto himself, into himself. As though by punishing himself enough, he could lessen the suffering of others.

It doesn't work like that.

No, it doesn't, but then…how can I be anything else? How can I, how dare I, be happy under the weight of all these deaths around me? How can I breathe this icy air, this atmosphere of loss and mourning we can't express, and be any other way.

Behind him, he heard Ironhide and Ratchet and Kup talking, their argument subsided into a companionable hum. How could he express how…offensive that was to him now? How risky, how vulnerable? Show a flash of happiness, a flash of concern for another and the war, like a sentient thing, some predator of malicious instinct, would sweep in on wings of pain and snatch it from your fingers.

None of them, for all their wisdom, for all their craft at war, had figured that out by now. Show pleasure and the war will ruin it. Love something and the war will deface it in front of you, cackling with glee. The only way to stay safe, the only way to stay sane, was to become numb, solitary. As cold and relentless and focused as an unfired rifle barrel.

Like good concealment—become indistinguishable from the landscape. Fight the war by blending into its very fabric, surfacing only to throw yourself into its path, flinging your life—half-life—like a flare of light, to distract, blind it from its intended target. Take me. Take me, your more loyal servant. Take me, the one who is already half-dead in your service, yet who still deals death. Ignore the young, the beautiful, the weak, those with still enough spark to hope. Take me. Take me, the one who fires coolly into your gaping mouth. Take me, the one no one will mourn. Take me, because this burden is too hard to bear, this debt is too high, and anything like a smile or the simple joys I used to take in life are…blasphemies, insults to the dead.

You cannot fear death if you are halfway dead. You cannot betray life if you are only half alive. Straddling that threshold, for as long as you are able.

He scanned the ground again, the now-familiar ramparts that seemed etched with the histories of the dead, as though they were finally staking claim on the world of the living, stains of energon, the circular pox of small-arms rounds, dents and damage merely outward signs of inner change. The whole place seemed to breathe death, to leech light and life into a flat, still grey.

This is home, Perceptor thought, where the living are the enemy, where movement is threat, where motion brings death. This is home, sinking into the morass of the dead. And it's almost over. Some day he'd cross that line too many times, slip his balance on that threshold.

And he only hoped that what little he had would be enough.


	12. Gathering Storm: Megatron

PG  
IDW: Megatron Origin  
Megatron  
angst, spoilers for Megatron Origin  
written for a prompt 'Megatron/Thundercracker be my strength' and **tf_speedwriting** prompt of Katrina (hence, the title) Because I iz efficient like that. Or something.  
Wordcount 902  
Time: 1:03 

Megatron went rigid, inwardly shaken by the news. Senator Ratbat. This whole time. The whole thing had been a manipulation. HE had been manipulated. "Acknowledged," he murmured softly, his vocalizer out of tune from recharge.

Of course. He was what, after all? Only a miner. Obsolete. His function replaced by mere, unsentient automation. A pit fighter, who called himself a gladiator, wrapping the brutality of it—from which he had once hesitated—in pretention as though it made it better, more noble.

He bit his lip, chewing on a bitter and oily taste. Betrayal. Or near betrayal. He had dared to trust, and though in the end Soundwave had chosen him over the senator, the fact that the game had been so deep that he had not even seen the pieces disturbed him.

Recharge had fled, entirely. Megatron pushed off his berth, feeling his weight hit the floor as though he weighed more than usual. As though something substantial and dense had come to roost on him. He slipped, as quietly as he could, through the recharge-hummed quiet of the rooms in his small underground base, his red optics more accustomed than anyone else here at penetrating the dark.

The literal dark, of course. This metaphorical darkness still blinded him. And would be, he thought, a dangerous undoing.

This was his new reality. This was his new world. Not miner. Not gladiator. But not politician. Never that route. Starscream's game he had seen through, had trusted that the glossy, earnest young jet's frantic genuflection when they'd first met wouldn't crumble in the face of punishment. A risk, but unlike with Soundwave, a risk he'd known he was taking.

Politics. All of it a game. A filthy game of lies and long manipulations and buried motives that made the simple, short viciousness of the arena seem almost clean and honest by comparison. Disgusting. His hands had been stained with energon, but in their own way, they had been clean.

Until now, when the lure for power began whispering in his audio, sweet, susurrus sounds of what he might accomplish not for others but for himself. Power he might attain, gather, wield, for no greater purpose than his whims.

That…scared him, as much as he still had the capacity to fear. He had long ago lost the fear of death. The arena sapped that from one as an unnecessary and dangerous distraction. Fear of pain, he had lost in the mines, where one slip of equipment could gouge deep into one's armor. No enemy outside could destroy him. Only from within.

Only from within.

He looked down at the blue frame curled into an exhausted ball by his foot, just inside the door to the small room the Seekers had reserved for themselves, claiming some obscure aristocratic privilege and privacy. He had let them—they had been useful and more, and had earned their privileges. And would keep earning them, he hoped. Because that old way of lineal privilege was dead now—brittle bones supporting the dry and desiccated corpse of the Senate, the marrow hollowed out by mechs who clutched corruption like a perquisite.

Reward must be earned.

For them, and for himself. He listened to their recharging motors, three different pitches of soft sound, related, like notes in a chord. Together and yet individual. And when together, perhaps, something greater.

The room smelled faintly of burnt fuel and heat-scorched thrust-vector cowling, a sensory testimony to how hard all of them had fought in the past decacycle. This, Megatron thought, stepping backwards out of the threshold, is important. This is a reminder. That we can do more than we thought we could, push ourselves harder, if we have something worth believing in. I fought first because my way of life was threatened; then because I thought it was power in its own right. Now…I must fight for something outside myself.

I must remember that, he thought. That is their strength; that shall be my strength. That is what shall save me from simply replacing a corrupt oligarchy with a self-twisted demagogue. Their willing giving of their strength, their solid faith in him, he thought, was a source of power deeper and greater than the hot crackling splash of energon on his fingers. Greater than life-over-death was the power to command faith and obedience and honor.

This one, he thought, looking down at Thundercracker, his miner's optics pulling out the details in a complicated mesh of angles, doubts. And his doubts shall be the surest level I have, the counterbalance to ambition, most trusted because most obvious.

He turned back, as quietly as he could on his heavy heels, looking around the cramped rooms as he passed again, through the enveloping darkness. Too small, too cramped, already reeking of too many mechs in too close contact. Soon, though, he thought, soon we move forward. No longer hiding in darkness, but opening to the light; no longer feeding off scraps and killing ourselves—as we have done for aeons-at the amusement and whims of others, but taking with force and confidence. Living, with the full force and vibrancy of life that knows how closely death shadows it.

And he felt the darkness seem to grow and swell around him, like a cloak, like a velvety presence of a power large and old and incorruptible, like the gathering clouds of a terrible but beautiful storm.


	13. Cusp of Return Drift, Rodimus, Megatron

1. Cusp of Return 

Rodimus stepped up next to the viewscreen. Cybertron, after all this time, spread beneath them again. And unlike last time, their last glance a backward one in flight, this was a slow approach, and the planet below glittered feebly with signs of life. A lot had changed, apparently. Down there, and up here. "Been a long time, huh?"

Drift shrugged. "Long enough." Non-committal, holding back. Well, Rodimus supposed, he had reason. The Autobots hadn't been exactly welcoming.

"None of us wanted this. Not even the Decepticons."

The other's mouth pulled down. "No. Megatron wanted it all to burn."

Rodimus considered. Drift had never been exactly forthcoming about his past, but he'd never really hidden it, either. Was this an invitation? "What do you think he's thinking?" He jerked his head back to the center of the ship, the core of Omega Supreme, where Megatron was held, immobilized.

A shrug, but not a hostile one. "Been a long time since we spoke."

"Did you used to?"

Another shrug. "A long time ago." A repetition, but an admission as well.

"Not afraid to, are you?" Halfway between teasing and testing.

A shadow crossed the silver facial plating. "Just…," Drift shook his head. "Not right."

"What's not right?"

The helm turned, the finials carving a helix in the dimness of the room. "Him. Here. Any of it."

"You don't think we should let him go, do you?" Rodimus remembered—a little too well—his own last meeting with the Decepticon. If his repaired body had forgotten, his memory core could still remember, vividly, the hot burning agony of the fusion cannon's blast, the sneer on the hard face, and the bitter pain of failure. He'd gone to redeem himself, and had failed. He was perfectly okay with Megatron, surrendered, neutralized and immobilized.

"Don't know. Just…the VVH."

Drift's telegraphic style was hard to get used to. Rodimus wondered how Perceptor had stood it for so long. Then again, Perceptor had changed. "He's Megatron. We have to have something to keep him controlled."

"Not that. I mean…Optimus."

Rodimus nodded, his own mouth pulling to one side. Yeah, he hadn't been happy with that either. Optimus using the harness's current. They'd just been talking. That was all. Talking. And Optimus had lost control. That's not what heroes do. Rodimus could see the temptation, sure, but…that's not what heroes do. It just wasn't.

Still, Optimus was the leader, right?

"Megatron could push a saint past his limit," Rodimus said. A half-hearted defense, but a defense nonetheless.

Drift bowed his head, taking a step back, as if closing off again. As if aware he'd said something wrong, unacceptable.

Heh. Rodimus was all about unacceptable. "Must be hard to watch another idol fall." Rodimus remembered Cybertron and Drift from before—it seemed every time the white mech spoke, someone shut him down. And yet Drift still kept trying. Holding his words quietly, weighing them as if measuring to see if they were worth the resistance he'd get.

A bitter snort. "Not an idol. I think that's the problem. Feel like I'm the only one who doesn't believe."

"Believe in what?"

A struggle. Drift really didn't want to answer. But it was a direct question and something in the mech's strange code of honor won out. "Optimus." The jaw tightened and then Drift suddenly turned his attention to the glowing net of lights of Cybertron, scattered below them like a spangled dark carpet.

"What do you believe in?"

"Hope. A future better than now, better than the past." A pause. "That's what I've always been fighting for."

"The past wasn't so bad."

The blue optics hardened as Drift turned, and for a klik, Rodimus could see Deadlock—the scowl, the gaze like a weapon, the entire body taut with violence. "It was for some of us." He mastered himself, with visible effort. "Fighting was better, because you were _doing _something."

"Kind of easy to do the wrong something, though." It didn't sound blaming, he hoped. Rodimus had learned a little too well, a little too personally, that action for the sake of action sometimes went wrong. He could feel Drift tense, then loosen.

"It is," Drift said, quietly. "Wrong thing for the right reasons."

"Or the right thing, for the wrong reasons." Like himself, how many times? This last time, haring off after the Matrix to prove…something to someone. He could still feel where the Matrix had rested, a memory of some powerful bliss. He'd learned so much, floating on the liminal edge of death, as space slowly cooled around him, the Matrix taking him, showing him himself, the war, their kind, with a kind of vertiginous depth-of-field.

Drift nodded, staring through the screen, through the planet itself, it seemed, until he could see the heart of the planet, struggling underneath the weight of their war. Staggering on, as they all did. He said nothing, but it wasn't a hostile silence, just one of knowing, and knowing that words didn't help sometimes, words did nothing but cheapen and attenuate. "Didn't see it," Drift murmured, raising one hand to the cool glass. "I didn't see any of it. Had to die to see it." A rapid blink of the optic shutters, his other hand reaching to stroke the Great Sword's hilt, as though finding some comfort in it.

"Me too," Rodimus said. Like Cybertron—a dead heart crusted over with ego and history. Something drastic needed to happen to start beating again, start living again. He managed a grin. "Funny how that works, huh?"

2. Ghosts of the Future

Drift stood in the doorway, lavender light from the Variable Voltage Harness dancing over his white armor. Just…looking, for a long time. Megatron. So different, and yet Drift would know him anywhere. Something about the EM field, or the curve of his optic shutter, the animating defiance in his frame.

The head turned, red optics homing in on him. The mouth twitched, doubtless thinking the same, before curling into a familiar smile. "Deadlock."

"Drift."

A snort of laughter. "The name I gave you not good enough?"

"Not who I am."

"It's not as easy as changing your name, Deadlock."

Drift's head bowed. "Yes. I know."

"So." A curious glint in the red optics, warring with the purple of the harness, Megatron's power armor. "Come to gloat then, have you?"

Drift shook his head. "No. Not gloat." He wasn't sure why he was here, but he knew it wasn't to gloat. His history was too tangled with Megatron's for that.

"Lecture, then."

"I'm in no position to lecture anyone."

"I'm, perhaps, in less of one." Mirth around the corners of his optics, practically rattling from the edges of his mouth. "So, Drift," and he said the name as though it were some alien word with a flavor he didn't quite know what to do with, "why are you here?"

"Not sure." It was something Rodimus had said, some throwaway comment, half in jest, but it had stuck with him. He hadn't spoken to Megatron. Not for ages. How could he be at peace with his past if he held back from facing it?

"You know," Megatron said, his tone conversational, as though proving a point: He was the one held captive, he was the one immobilized, yet he was the one who was in control. A subterfuge, but one not less true for the fact that it was, "It doesn't suit you."

It was distressing, that in their old familiarity, Drift knew what Megatron was talking about. One hand brushed the Autobot insignia in his shoulder well. "Factions suit no one."

"And yet, there you are," Megatron said. "Then again, you always did want to belong." He said the last as though it were a sneer.

"Yes." Wounds only hurt if you let them strike home. "Too much."

"Belonging always comes at a price, Drift."

A nod. Oh, he had learned that all too well.

"And is it worth it?"

Drift frowned. He was letting too many blows in, past his guard, only blocking. Time to parry. "Is this for you?"

"Worth it?" The smile turned contented. "Drift. You remember. I always get what I want."

"You want this. Captivity. Helplessness." Drift tried to imagine himself in the same situation—immobilized, stripped, neutralized. His optics slid to the arm, looking strangely naked without the heavy cannon.

"Drift." The head reared back and for a klik all Drift could see were the bare, exposed cables of the throat. It was a taunt, of course. One Megatron knew he wouldn't rise to, but would have to fight the urge nonetheless. "My very presence here is more disturbing to the Autobots than anything else I could do. Fight? We've become numbed to it. But this: quiescence, obedience? This shakes the very foundations of what they think I am."

"Which is…?"

A laugh, dark and velvety, and oh, Drift remembered the seduction of it. "I am what they can't understand, Drift." The head reared again, an untamed animal gesture. "And you? You have tried to shape yourself within the confines of their comprehension. You limit yourself. Now." A chuckle, fond. "Is that freedom? Is that truly better than what I offered?"

"Freedom."

The mirth seemed to fade from the red optics. "That thing you have always reached for, Drift. And then pulled back, appalled by your own dirty hands."

Drift stepped back: Megatron knew him too well. Maybe if someone knew you from the beginning they knew you better than you knew yourself. He remembered, suddenly, how he'd felt, standing in that crowd, to hear the great revolutionary speak. And to be recognized, called by name. By Megatron. Drift was an unknown, a nobody. But Megatron had seen him. Megatron had given him a name, praised him.

He had fallen for it, like tumbling into a gravity well. "Your methods were hardly clean."

"My methods are harsh. Yes. But look around you." The dark chin traced a semicircle, encompassing the ship around them. "Would your compatriots have listened to any less? Did they listen to us when we merely spoke back on Cybertron, Drift?" The red optics took on a sly glint. "And isn't that why they tolerate you, after all?"

A palpable hit. There was no point disguising it. Drift let it show on his face.

Megatron nodded, rolling one shoulder in his harness. "They pretend to be better than Decepticons."

"They are. Have you seen what we have become?" Drift remembered what he'd said to Turmoil. The Decepticons had become mired in violence, and the Autobots fallen. He'd believed it then, but now, somehow, he wasn't sure he still did.

"You have seen me, Drift. And this Optimus you now follow. Tell me. How do we measure?"

"I don't follow him. I do what's right."

"And you see the distance between them, don't you? You feel it." A snort of laughter. the kind that knew he was right. "In your own way, you're as immobilized as I am, Drift."

Drift wanted to refute him. He wanted to feel pity. Anger. Anything other than this almost awed respect, this poignant nostalgia for when the world was young and everything seemed clear.

"Do you remember?" As if clairvoyant, the voice quiet, soft, like an echo of the past. "Do you remember the days of glory? When the world was ours?"

"Was ours to burn, to destroy. All we knew how to do."

"And these Autobots know something else?"

Drift sighed, frustrated. It was always like this with Megatron. In those days, the distant past, it had seemed exciting, a constant battle, a way to keep honed and sharp. Perfect Decepticons.

And maybe that wasn't wrong. Constant alertness. Constant guard. It kept you busy. Kept you too busy, sometimes, to see what you were doing. But that was better, sometimes, than blind faith. "I fight so the war ends, Megatron."

"Strange that I am not fighting then, isn't it?"

"You're always fighting, Megatron." Something dangerousy close to fondness in his own voice. Drift pressed his mouth together, as though trying to quash the emotion.

Megatron laughed. "You understand. Don't you, Drift?" He nearly winked, as though that understanding would be a bond between them, a wall between Drift and the other Autobots.

"I thought I did. I thought you believed what you promised us." And Drift realized he was talking about the past. The past had never left him, would never leave him. How had Megatron come to peace with his?

"I do. I do. And that," a pause, and for a moment the hard, glossy composure seemed to slip, "that's why I cannot be broken, Drift. Not here. Not by them."

"There are worse things than breaking," Drift said. Wing seemed to hang before him, between them, like a spectre, a phantom of what Drift might have been, had a thousand branches gone differently. Wing had broken him, cracked him open, and—he hoped—released some light.

"There are," Megatron agreed. "One must destroy to rebuild, after all." An old slogan, so old it seemed to reek of the past, the smell of hot energon and an almost frantic hope. Then the voice lowered, the chin tipping down, Megatron wanting to drop the pose for a moment, his red optics catching at Drift's blue. "The secret, " he said, his voice so soft it was nearly lost in the hum of the VVH, "is to never forget the past. Remember, Deadlock. Drift. Don't forget the past. Ever."

A shiver ran over Drift's frame, the image of Wing between them seeming to ripple and reform; the keen intensity of the words seemed to slice into his cortex with the weight of prophecy.


End file.
